Chapter 9 - Touchdown
Silence.
A heavy, ringing, absolute silence descended upon the flight deck of Trans-Continental Flight 842.
The master caution alarm had finally burned itself out. The cockpit displays were dark, flickered into standby mode by the severed electrical lines. Through the cracked acrylic of the front windscreen, the runway was bathed in the harsh, golden light of the late afternoon Nevada sun.
Outside, the world was moving in fast forward.
Four massive yellow crash trucks roared across the runway, their roof-mounted water cannons already unleashing towering arcs of white foam that doused the smoking, shredded right wingtip. The red strobes of emergency vehicles painted the inside of the cockpit in rhythmic pulses of crimson light.
Inside the flight deck, neither pilot moved.
Mark Jensen sat frozen, his fingers still hooked into the fabric of his trousers, his eyes wide, staring at the empty expanse of concrete stretching out past the nose.
Beside him, Pauline Sanders slowly released her grip on the control column.
Her fingers were cramped into stiff, claw-like shapes. The joints in her hands were swollen, throbbing with a dull, sickening ache. Her red wool cardigan was dusted with white powder from the cockpit fire extinguisher seal, and a single strand of silver hair had escaped her neat bun, falling across her forehead.
She raised a trembling, liver-spotted hand, reached up to the overhead console, and calmly clicked the remaining battery switch to *OFF*.
The final hum of the avionics died.
“First Officer Jensen,” Pauline said. Her voice was slightly hoarse, but completely steady.
Jensen blinked, his head turning with mechanical slowness. He looked at her as if looking at a ghost that had stepped out of the grave.
“Y-yes, ma'am?” he croaked.
“Complete your shutdown checklist,” she said gently. “Secure the remaining fuel valves. Your passengers are waiting.”
Jensen stared at her. A single tear broke free from his eye, tracking through the soot and dried sweat on his cheek.
Then, without warning, the thirty-something airline pilot buried his face in his hands and wept.
It wasn't the weeping of fear; it was the uncontrollable, soul-shattering release of a man who had stared directly into his own death and had been pulled back from the edge by an impossible hand.
“I’m sorry,” Jensen sobbed, his shoulders shaking. “I’m so sorry... what I said to you... at the door... I didn't know... God, I didn't know...”
Pauline looked at him for a long moment.
The hard, lethal edge of Widow 6 faded from her eyes, replaced by the soft, infinite patience of a grandmother who had seen too many young men carry burdens too heavy for their hearts.
She reached out and placed her small, warm palm on Jensen’s trembling shoulder.
“You held the throttle, Mark,” she said softly. “When it counted, you held it. That makes you a pilot in my book. Now wipe your face. An officer does not greet his passengers with tears on his cheeks.”
Behind them, the cockpit door was thrown open.
Chloe stood in the entryway, her uniform disheveled, her blonde hair falling around her face. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was smiling—a brilliant, wild, radiant smile.
“They’re alive,” Chloe gasped, her voice choking. “Captain Evans... the medics are already through the forward door! They got his pulse back! The AED shocked his rhythm back! He’s breathing!”
She looked from Jensen to Pauline.
“Every single passenger... all two hundred and ninety-eight of them... not a single serious injury. They’re evacuating through the left-side slides right now.”
Chloe took two steps into the cockpit, dropped to her knees beside Pauline’s seat, and wrapped her arms around the old woman’s waist, burying her face in the lavender-scented wool of her red cardigan.
“Thank you,” the young woman sobbed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you...”
Pauline patted Chloe’s back with her stiff fingers, smiling faintly out the window at the desert hills.
“You did well, Chloe,” Pauline whispered. “You opened the door.”
Through the side window, a convoy of dark blue Air Force sedans roared up the taxiway, bypassing the fire trucks. The lead car bore the three-star plate of a lieutenant general.
Before the car had even completely stopped, the doors flew open.
Brigadier General Thomas Vance stepped out onto the foam-covered concrete. He wasn't wearing an overcoat or a hat. His uniform tie was whipped by the rotor wash of the hovering rescue helicopters.
He didn't run toward the passenger slides. He didn't look at the fire crews.
He walked directly to the nose of the smoking, battered Boeing 767, stopped directly beneath the left cockpit window, snapped his heels together, and brought his right hand up to his eyebrow in a crisp, motionless, and trembling salute.
Pauline leaned her head against the headrest, looking down through the scratched cockpit glass.
May you like
She raised two stiff fingers to the brim of an invisible flight cap, acknowledging the gesture with the faint, knowing nod of an old soldier who had finally come home from the longest mission of her life.
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